


Study Me

by flitwickslittlebrotha



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: ...for now, Just Friends, M/M, Oblivious, POV Adam Parrish, Pining, Pre-Canon, Snarky Ronan Snarky Adam, but Adam doesn't know it yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29666712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flitwickslittlebrotha/pseuds/flitwickslittlebrotha
Summary: In which Adam studies at Monmouth Manufacturing and makes some observations about his least-favorite resident.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 13
Kudos: 93





	Study Me

Adam Parrish loved Monmouth Manufacturing.

He loved the wide open space. He loved the stacks of books. The maps, the fossils, the posters, the potted mint plant.

He wasn’t sure he could love a person, but if he could, Adam would love Gansey. Not the version of him Adam had first seen in September, in the front row of their shared Latin class with his hand raised for every question. That version had threatened Adam with his intelligence. More importantly, maybe, with his magnificence. Adam had watched with a carefully uncaring eye as Gansey shook hands with upperclassmen, chatted with professors. He was the shiniest kid at Aglionby, and Adam had learned long ago that shiny things were fake.

But then everything changed in the span of a car ride. Soon, Adam was riding in that rundown Camaro ten times a week, to and from school each day. He didn’t even mind getting up so early for Gansey’s crew practice, because Gansey’s animated conversation more than made up for Adam’s perpetual fatigue. Their unexpected friendship was the best part of his life.

He loved that about Monmouth, too. That it was Gansey’s.

What he did _not_ love, was that it was also Ronan Lynch’s.

Ronan had never warmed up to Adam, not in the three months since the two of them had met. Whereas Gansey was always quick to greet Adam with his tail wagging, Ronan never offered him anything more than a drawled-out _Parrish_. At first Adam had thought it was a jealousy thing; Ronan was clearly the possessive type. But it was worse when Gansey wasn’t around. The way Ronan treated Adam, like he had done something to offend Ronan, gave him the distinct feeling that it was personal.

Unfortunately, they were a two-for-one package, and if Adam wanted a place in king’s court, he had to deal with the king’s brooding sidekick.

The three of them were supposed to be studying, Gansey having invited Adam over for that exact reason. But two minutes in, Ronan had barked out a laugh and said _fuck this_ , and a half-hour later Gansey got a call from Mallory. Adam still wasn’t exactly sure who that was, but Gansey had been ebulliently talking into his cellphone from the other side of the factory floor ever since.

So now it was just Adam, sitting on the faded rug, leaning against Gansey’s mattress, highlighting a history textbook alone.

A shadow fell over his lap, and then a bare foot purposefully caught the corner of his textbook, flipping the pages forward as it stepped over him.

Adam knew he had only done it to get a reaction. Knowing that made him want to find his page again, keep reading, and ignore the moment.

But for some reason, quiet, controlled, collected Adam Parrish could never keep his cool when it came to Ronan Lynch.

“Either join me, or get out of my way,” he said, looking up. He had no patience for people who wasted the opportunities given to them.

Ronan was a skyscraper above him. Tall, pointy, metallic. “We both know I’m gonna fail it anyway, Parrish,” he said, inexplicably retrieving a pair of scissors from Gansey’s desk before heading back to his room.

Adam caught his foot before he could kick the textbook again.

Ronan looked down at Adam’s hand curled around his ankle, then back up to his face. His expression was unreadable, but he didn’t shake Adam off.

“You could always study,” Adam suggested acerbically, releasing his grip.

He thought that would be the end of it. He thought Ronan would go back to his room, close the door, turn up the music.

Instead, Ronan said “I don’t know how.”

Adam laughed. “What an original excuse, Lynch.”

And then the foot _did_ kick. The cover, this time, which slammed on Adam’s hand.

He looked up in shock.

“Fuck you, Parrish,” Ronan said, and stalked to his room.

Adam took a second to figure out what just happened.

Surely Ronan Lynch was just indolent and uncaring. Surely he blew off his classes on purpose, because he thought he had better things to do than learn math and science. Surely he got into Aglionby just like Adam did, by passing rigorous exams.

Only it was quite possible those exams were easier to pass as a thirteen year old, unexpected to know trigonometry or ancient history, than they were at seventeen, when Adam had taken them.

Adam got up.

Ronan’s door was cracked open, and it felt like an invitation.

He’d only been in Ronan’s room a few times before, and always with Gansey’s mediating presence. Once again, he was blown away by how _much_ there was. In the corner was an expensive-looking sound system, surrounding by six pairs of identical sneakers. The window sill was lined with gnarled plants and crystals and bones. Scattered across the floor were windup toys and Legos that stacked differently than Adam had ever seen before, and next to the bed was a bucket of plastic lighters.

So many things Adam would never have, but also would never _want_. He didn’t understand Ronan at all.

Ronan’s back was turned where he sat on the bed, but he wasn’t wearing his usual headphones.

So Adam said, “I could help you.”

The edges of wings flapped across Ronan’s back as his shoulders shifted. The tattoo was new, but Ronan hadn’t shown it off yet, at least not to Adam. All he’d been able to glimpse so far were feathers and beaks and claws.

“I don’t need your help,” Ronan said to the window.

“Actually,” Adam countered, breeching the doorway and stepping into the room. “You don’t _want_ my help. Because you definitely need it.”

Ronan turned then, just his head, just a bit, so his nose and eyelashes were in profile. His right eye was a stark blue against the shadow of his face.

He didn’t say anything, and Adam figured that was the only response he was going to get.

He crossed to the bed and sat down on the opposite side.

“Look,” he sighed. “I use little tricks and rhymes to help me remember dates and names. You can ignore me if you want, but I’m going to say them out loud.”

Ronan shifted slightly, angling his body just a hair closer to Adam’s, and remained quiet.

Adam flipped open the textbook and found one of his highlighted passages. Then he closed his eyes, and said, “All boys should come home, please.”

“What the _fuck._ ”

Adam opened his eyes.

Ronan was staring at him, and his look was so uncharacteristically bewildered that Adam couldn’t help the laugh that coughed out of him.

“It’s a mnemonic,” he said, pointing to the passage in the book. “To remember Henry VIII’s wives.”

“What?” Ronan looked no less confused.

Adam swung his legs around so the two of them were properly facing each other. Up close, surrounded by all his bizarre odds and ends, Ronan looked less like a supervillain and more like a boy.

“Each word in the sentence corresponds to each of Henry’s wives,” he explained. “Aragon, Boleyn, Seymour, Cleves, Howard, Parr.”

Ronan looked down at the textbook, where six portraits of perfectly lovely women stared up at them. “Say it again?” he asked.

“All boys should come home, please.”

“All boys should come home, please,” Ronan mumbled. He looked up at Adam, and his grin was as sharp as a knife. “I like that.” He flicked Adam’s forehead, but it was painless. “What else you got in there for me?”

“No,” Adam said. “Say them back to me.”

“What?”

“Say the names of the wives.”

“All boys—”

“No,” Adam cut him off. “Their actual names.”

“Oh,” Ronan said.

“Yeah,” Adam said.

“Okay wait.” Ronan flipped his legs up and tucked them under him, his folded knees pressing against Adam’s own. Instinctively, Adam moved back, suddenly self-conscious of how he was taking up Ronan’s space. Ronan stopped moving and looked down at the gap between their knees, and a crease appeared in his forehead.

Adam felt an awkwardness settle unexplained over the two of them, and he started to apologize. “Sorry, I—”

“Aragon, Boleyn, Seymour, Cleves, Howard, Parr,” Ronan stated. Adam wasn’t sure what his face was doing, but judging by the eyebrow Ronan raised, he probably looked as surprised as he felt.

“Y-yeah,” he stuttered out. “Um. Good.”

Ronan leaned in, predatory, like a shark sniffing out blood. It was an expression not dissimilar from all the others Ronan had thrown his way over the semester, but now Adam was wondering if perhaps he’d misinterpreted them. Maybe Ronan didn’t hate him as much as he thought. Maybe he was just…

Adam didn’t know.

“So,” Ronan smirked. “What else have you got for me?”

Adam now had questions that couldn't be answered with facts and figures, but he looked back down at the textbook anyway. “We need to know his dates,” he said, reassuring himself with the comforting confidence of his intelligence. “Henry VIII was born June 28, 1491. That one I remember because June is the sixth month, so 6 plus 2 is 8, and then 8, of course, all by itself—”

“Jesus,” Ronan muttered.

Adam stopped. _What does he need? What will get through to him?_ "What about picturing it?” he asked tentatively. Ronan raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seem like the… _numbers_ type,” he explained.

“Gee, thanks, Parrish—”

“I just mean,” Adam said. “There are different ways of studying. This works for me, but maybe you should try picturing it. Like… like you’re assigning meaning to the dates. Like you can imagine the way they feel or sound or something.”

“Like I’m dreaming them,” Ronan said.

“What?”

“What?”

“He said like he’s dreaming them,” Gansey said from the doorway. He tucked his phone back in his pocket as he walked in and flopped onto Ronan’s bed. His socked foot pressed against Ronan's calf, but neither of them moved away. Gansey didn’t think twice about it, didn’t stress over how much space he was taking up or whether he was cramping Ronan’s style. He just made himself comfortable like he owned the place. Which he did, but...

That didn't explain his ease. It was that GanseyandRonan was a single unit, sometimes. It was that Gansey always knew Ronan’s limits, and where he was allowed to sit and touch. It was that Gansey wasn’t under Ronan’s skin, but more like in his blood. It was that Adam didn’t think there’d ever be an AdamandRonan. “Whatever that means,” Gansey added.

“What did Mallory want?” Ronan asked.

Adam sat back and watched the two of them talk. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of Gansey’s quest. He’d stopped believing in magic a long time ago. Sometimes, when Gansey got that look in his eye, the one halfway between manic and inspired, Adam wanted nothing more than to believe. But just like love, he didn't think he could.

As always, though, Ronan was drinking in every word Gansey was saying, as if he really believed in these strange impossibilities. Gansey could hold his attention like no one else. Not even Adam, when he was trying to keep Ronan from failing out of school.

_Like I’m dreaming them_.

Adam also stopped believing in dreams. Dreams didn’t put food on the table, money in his pockets, wouldn’t get him into a good college. Hard work did all of that.

“Sorry guys,” he said, interrupting Gansey’s enthusiastic retelling of his phone call. “I’m just gonna go in the other room, I need to focus.”

Gansey offered his fist and Adam bumped it with his own, and then Gansey went back to talking. But when Adam glanced over at Ronan, this time he wasn’t paying attention to Gansey. Indecipherable and piercing, his eyes trailed Adam out of his room, unwavering until Adam turned the corner, and looked away first.


End file.
